Divisi and music xml export

Dorico
1

Hey all,

Went through the annoying process of having to convert a multi movement work into another notation program. Music XML is annoyingly basic in this regard but the thing that took longest was untangling lines that were formerly on divisi -

When exporting divisi lines, they are either put onto the same line with different voices or onto different lines, but seemingly at random sections of it are placed on the top line and other sections on the bottom section - it looks like a “best guess” based on beam grouping and tessiatura, but the bottom line is that it takes hours to unknit and proofread (not sure reading this back why I didn’t just do that after I realised what had happened - I must have been a certain way through the process such that I couldn’t go back…)

Not sure what process causes this but is there a way to make it export the lines properly, without resorting to setting up extra players and copying all of the divisi information onto them?

V best
Edd

2

Divisi isn’t something that XML understands, I think – given that it’s a unique feature of Dorico.
What is the destination app? How it interprets the incoming XML may be as much of factor as how Dorico creates it.

1 Like
3

It’s Sibelius - granted might be a problem their end, and I don’t know if it would work properly in Finale - is there an XML standard for divisi?

If not then I wonder if it would be better for Dorico to automatically separate out the parts…

4

There is no direct, semantic support in MusicXML for divisi. At some point I guess we do need to spend some time working on this, but it’s not something we are likely to be looking at in the near future.